Taxing dissent: The impact of a social media tax in Uganda

• Tác giả: Levi Boxell, Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld
• Ngôn ngữ: eng
• Ký hiệu phân loại: 916.761 Geography of and travel in Africa
• Thông tin xuất bản: 2019
• Bộ sưu tập: Metadata
• ID: 163332

Tóm tắt

We examine the impact of a new tool for suppressing the expression of dissent---a daily tax on social media use. Using a synthetic control framework, we estimate that the tax reduced the number of georeferenced Twitter users in Uganda by 13 percent. The estimated treatment effects are larger for poorer and less frequent users. Despite the overall decline in Twitter use, tweets referencing collective action increased by 31 percent and observed protests increased by 47 percent. These results suggest that taxing social media use may not be an effective tool for reducing political dissent.